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A moderate GOP uprising is in full swing against Gov. Sam Brownback, the fierce fiscal and social conservative whose policies led to a purge of middle-of-the-road Republicans from the Legislature early in his tenure.

In a rare and surprising act of political defiance on Tuesday, more than 100 Republicans, including current and former officeholders, endorsed Brownback’s opponent, statehouse Democratic leader Paul Davis. Polls show the challenger with a surprisingly strong shot at taking out Brownback in November.

Across conservative states in the Great Plains and the South, the last vestiges of Democratic power are at risk of being washed away in the fall elections by the tides of President Barack Obama’s unpopularity. In the Jayhawk State, where Obama was trounced twice and is reviled by conservatives despite his own Kansas roots, Democrats are looking to buck that trend: Davis is presenting himself as part of a proud tradition of centrists from both parties.

The race is shaping up as a contest between a pair of candidates portraying each other as outside the mainstream. Davis says Brownback’s hard-right agenda has damaged the state economy and undermined the spirit of compromise that had long prevailed in the state capitol. Brownback is casting Davis as an Obama supporter who’s too liberal for a reddening state. Moderate Republicans could tip the balance.

“Sam Brownback has not only not been able to work with Democrats, he hasn’t been able to work with a lot of the people in his own party,” Davis said in a recent interview during a campaign stop at a technical college in Wichita. “He essentially declared war with moderate Republicans during the last state Senate election. Many moderate Republicans saw that, and they are coming to support my campaign.”

One of those GOP moderates is Steve Morris. As the president of the Kansas state Senate when Brownback was sworn into office in 2011, Morris battled with Brownback and conservatives in the statehouse, including over highly contentious tax reform legislation that has become a central issue in this year’s campaign. When Morris faced a conservative primary challenge in 2012, the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, Kansas Right to Life and the Kansas Chamber of Commerce spent big to help his opponent pull off an upset against the GOP leader.

In the interview, Morris said Brownback privately acknowledged responsibility for his political demise, suggesting he could have done more to stop the purge.

“I don’t approve of what happened, but I’m responsible for it,” Brownback said in a telephone call to Morris, according to the ex-legislator. A spokesman for the governor did not comment on the phone call but noted that Brownback did not endorse a candidate in the primary.

Now Morris is repaying the political favor by endorsing Davis along with a suite of current and former Republican politicians, including former statehouse speakers, local mayors, city council members, GOP delegates and an ex-congresswoman (Jan Meyers). Many of them argue that the governor’s policies on public schools, highway funding, Medicaid and taxes are too much for moderates to swallow.

“It’s a big step for every one of us … and a major departure from our Republican roots,” Dick Bond, a Republican and former Kansas Senate president, said at the Topeka event Tuesday. November “should be about electing a moderate, common-sense Kansan as governor.”

Republican allies of the governor characterized the endorsements as an act of desperation by embittered ex-politicians. And in a recent interview at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita on a hot summer morning, Brownback dismissed the criticism of his tenure, saying he has been aggressive in trying to right the state’s fiscal ship.

“I represent a pragmatic conservatism, or a bleeding-heart conservatism, where I say, ‘OK, let’s make it work,’” Brownback said. “Bob Dole did a fair amount of that, too.”

The 57-year-old Brownback is trying to energize a base of staunch conservatives, particularly the religious community, that has been a source of his political strength through one term in the House, three Senate elections and a victory in the governor’s race during the tea party wave of 2010. He’s now trying to tap back into that base of support, enlisting the likes of another conservative culture warrior — Rick Santorum — to campaign with him Monday at rallies outside Kansas City and Wichita.

Even though Brownback’s star continues to rise on the far right, some polls show him in a perilous position with Republican voters in the state. A Survey USA poll last month showed the governor losing to Davis by six points, with one in four registered Republicans defecting to the Democratic ticket, as well as independents turning the Democrat’s way by 19 points.